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PdF 2010: Announcing the Developer Track

We're doing something new this year at Personal Democracy Forum, a special Developer breakout track to create some time and space for shop talk and idea-sharing among the technologists who actually make the platforms and tools that the rest of us rely on so heavily.

The Developer track is inspired by an idea from Clay Johnson, the director of Sunlight Labs, who notes, "Going to conferences as a technologist in this space often means speaking a foreign language, since building great tools and innovating depends on a lot more than using social media to build your email list." He adds,

Here we're getting designers & developers to talk to each other, and hopefully we will start pushing the field forward for better civic participation--whether it be elections or governing or organizing or plain old journalism. We're facing similar problems, and doing innovative things, so let's take the opportunity to spend some time talking about what's under the hood of what we do.

Unlike our other breakout tracks, the Developer track will use the cumulative four hours of breakout session time for eight half-hour presentations/conversations by individual coders or designers. Each is doing cutting edge work, either for partisan or nonpartisan ends--though as with all our other sessions, we'll park the partisan politicking at the door and instead focus on how technology itself is changing the game.

--Friday, June 4th, 2:00-3:00pm: Andrew Hoppin (CIO, New York State Senate) and Nathan Freitas (lead developer, New York State Senate CIO's office); Joe Edelman (founder and CEO of Citizen Logistics, former developer of Couchsurfing.com)